


The Lucas Interrogations, Part 1

by jujubiest



Series: The Lucas Compendium [6]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Immortality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pillow Talk, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 11:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucas and Adam talk about what immortality means, and what it means for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucas Interrogations, Part 1

Now whenever Adam comes out of the river, there's a dry towel and a warm car waiting for him in the dark. And Lucas, face set in lines of grim relief that make Adam's heart twinge. He often considers leaving off his experiments all together. He can't--he craves the rush of adrenaline too much by now, the brief rush of fear that makes him feel so alive for just those few seconds--but he tries, for Lucas. Because Lucas makes him feel alive, too, in a quieter way which he has not known since before his first death.

Lucas never yells at him or says a word, never begs him to stop. He's never mentioned it again, in fact, after that first night by the river. He just wraps him up. bundles him into the car, and takes him home to that calm, neat little apartment. They drink coffee, curled up together on Lucas's tiny sofa. It's all so beautifully banal, and Adam feels almost like an ordinary man.

Sometimes Lucas drags him straight to bed, discarding the towel at the door and tearing off the rest of his soaked clothes on the way. Adam isn't sure it's healthy, the way Lucas clings to him and kisses him like he's trying to breathe him back to life somehow, anchor him to a world in which people live in brevity and die in finality and it all means something. He wants to be at least a good enough man to care, but it's hard to keep that thought in mind with Lucas's hands and mouth all over him, his heavy breath on the damp, naked skin of Adam's neck in the dark.

They fuck themselves into a sweaty, sated stupor and then just lie there on their backs next to one another, barely touching except for the tentative hand Adam reaches up to run over and over through Lucas's hair, sighing into the dark at all the things he isn't saying. He never even complains that Adam stinks of the river water. Adam thinks that must mean something, but he's damned if he knows what. Perhaps Lucas is so glad to have him come back each time that he doesn't care. Or perhaps he just doesn't care, period.

* * *

 

There comes a night, not too many weeks on, when Adam can't take the post-coital silence any longer.

Lucas's breath has slowed to a soft, even rhythm beside him. The room is eerily quiet otherwise, and he decides he's too old for this.

"Ask me something," he says, turning on his side toward Lucas. His voice sounds unnaturally loud in the quiet room. "Please. Anything. Anything you want to know, and I'll answer honestly."

Lucas shifts over onto his side as well, looking at him with a mystified expression.

"Okay," he says, sounding uncertain. "What's your favorite color?"

Adam snorts. "Really? I'm immortal, I've lived for two thousand years, and all you want to know is my favorite color?"

"That's not an answer," Lucas says, almost petulant. "And I thought I'd ease into the hard stuff."

"Ah," Adam nods, schooling his expression with a bit of a struggle. "Understood. Well...I've always liked pink." He says it with a perfectly straight face.

Lucas rolls his eyes. "You're making fun of me."

"Not at all," Adam objects, grinning. "You know, pink was once considered a very strong, masculine color. It was used for baby boys' blankets up until World War II. I always liked it...I thought it was a color with character."

"You know," Lucas says thoughtfully. "I knew a guy in high school who wore this t-shirt all the time that said 'real men wear pink.' I just thought he was being ironic, but maybe he was being historical?"

Adam can't help but chuckle. "Maybe so."

They fall into an odd, smiling silence. It takes them each a few minutes to realize they're just lying there naked, staring at each other. Adam doesn't even try to wipe the ridiculous expression from his face, but Lucas's gradually falls into a look that says he's thinking, hard. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and his eyes are serious.

"How did you...die, the first time?"

Adam's smile fades at that. How much to tell? No...he told Lucas he would be honest, so better to tell it all.

"It was so long ago, I wish I could say I didn't remember. But I do. I remember that day far better than anything that came before it, and better than many things that came after it. I was a prisoner, locked away for my beliefs. Many who believed as I did were locked away in that time...we were considered dangerous rebels intent on bringing down the empire with our heresies. In truth, we just wanted freedom for our people and the right to live as we saw fit--many of the same things people have fought for in the two millennia since, really...and yet the battles go on."

"Don't get maudlin on me now," Lucas teases gently, reaching out to brush his fingers lightly across Adam's brow. The gentle touch sent warmth flooding through him. Such a simple thing, yet so pleasing. "What happened next?"

"I was protecting another prisoner, a stranger but a fellow believer. I angered one of my jailers, and I was stabbed," Adam says flatly, leaning into that soft touch on his brow and closing his eyes, remembering. "Many times over. I remember the way the first dagger felt going in, and the second, and the third...after that I only remember feeling cold. And then I woke up in the water, far away from my prison."

"I'm sorry," Lucas says. "What did you do?"

"At first I didn't fully understand what had happened," Adam says. "I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I went back home, to my family and friends. I went back to preaching our beliefs. Before long, I was thrown into prison again. This time when it came time to kill me, they boiled me in oil."

At Lucas's sharp intake of breath, Adam opens his eyes. There's a dawning understanding in Lucas's face. He's putting things together. Adam smiles tightly.

"Don't get too excited," he says. "None of it was really as impressive or divine as it's made to sound in the text."

"Still," Lucas breathes. "Did you...know him?"

"Yes, I knew him. I loved him, more than anything. I would gladly have followed him to the ends of the earth. When he was taken from us, he broke my heart more than all the rest."

"But he came back," Lucas ventures. Adam's smile softens into something sad.

"I don't know about that," he says. "I heard it too, around that time. But I was never there. I never saw him again. But far be it from me to confirm or deny such a monumental event."

"Now you're just being evasive."

"No, not with you," Adam says, drawing himself in closer. He closes the small gap between them, pressing a kiss to Lucas's lips and nuzzling into the crook of his shoulder, as much to feel close to him as to hide his own face. "Never with you." And he means it, but he can't look at Lucas right now, not with the memory of that  _other man,_ a man he loved more than life and god and country, still fresh and floating between them. It's too much, and Adam didn't think it would be this hard to talk about it. He thought  _he_ was hardened, tough enough to recount the facts of his own tragic existence without flinching from them. He was wrong.

But he promised. So he gives himself exactly two minutes before he pulls back far enough to look into Lucas's face again.

"Next question," he says.

* * *

It becomes almost routine after that. Adam stops flirting with death quite so freely, but there are still times when he finds himself being pulled toward oblivion only to wake up in the freezing, stinking river. And Lucas is always there, somehow. They've made no arrangement between them, and Adam doubts Lucas has the time to follow him constantly. He worries that perhaps Lucas simply sleeps in his car by the river every night, but dismisses that idea. Surely not. He hopes not.

The important thing is that he's always there, and it's out of the river and into the car, back to the apartment and either into dry clothes on the couch with something hot to drink, or off with everything and into bed for what Adam is beginning to understand as Lucas's way of making sure he's still with him. It aches to think of that too closely, so he doesn't.

And always after the drink or the sex, the questions. Only one or two each time, but always at least one.

"Did you have a best friend growing up?" "My younger brother."

"Were you always attracted to men." "Men, women...I'm attracted to people. Very few of them. Perhaps three in my entire life." "Well I feel special." "You are."

"What was your favorite time period?" "Nineteenth century France. The Bohemian Revolution, or so it's popularized today." "What was that like?" "Filthy. Europe in general was filthy during that time. And there were a great many pretenders. Mostly the sons of wealthy businessmen and noblemen who thought it very noble to choose a penniless, artistic existence among the Romani peoples in Paris's low-rent districts. Insufferable. Much like your youth "hipster" culture today, really, in some ways. Butting into things they have no notion of the true meaning of in order to be considered interesting. It's sad how these things tend to repeat themselves."

"Why do you think you can't...die?" Lucas always stumbles over the word. That one takes Adam more than a moment or two to answer, despite the amount of time he's spent asking himself the same question.

"I used to think it was blessing, a gift from god for my faithfulness, or perhaps a reward for saving the life of that prisoner. As the years went on I began to think of it as an affliction, then a punishment, and then a curse. Although I could never think what I did to deserve it, not before that first time. But in light of the years since, I wonder if it was punishment for what was in my heart all along."

"And what's that," Lucas whispers. And Adam can't quite tell him the whole truth, not yet. He hates himself for it, because he promised to be honest. And he will be, but not completely.

"Right at this moment? Only you?" It's the truth, but it's an evasion, and Lucas knows. But in typical Lucas fashion, he doesn't judge. He simply leaves off asking questions for that night, curling in close and wrapping one long arm around Adam's waist, closing his eyes and going almost immediately to sleep.

Adam buries his face in Lucas's hair and stays awake for a long time, thinking.

 

 


End file.
